The Great Debate: Trump Talked Substance But Kamala Won on Tone and Looks

US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both knew what they had to do in their first – and possibly only – debate in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center on Tuesday night, and Trump had far more solid substantive factual points to make as well as the only dramatic new policy initiative of the night and indeed of the entire campaign so far: His promise if elected not even to wait the two months till his scheduled inauguration but to launch an immediate peace initiative to end the war between Russia and Ukraine immediately..

Nevertheless, it was Harris, who said far, far less, who won the night – based on the now 44-year record and pattern of US nationally televised presidential debates going back to 1960 – and on electoral psychological dynamics in America that now go back for at least 128 years.

For here is the fundamental lesson of psychology in American national politics: Happy smilers who say nothing but exude optimism win: Angry populists who glower and shout a lot alarm far more people and lose, however great the justice, ideals, and social justice of their platforms, arguments and plans.

This pattern worked dramatically even before the age of television and radio back in 1896 when kindly, soothing veteran Republican political insider in Washington, Congressman William McKinley won a decisive victory over the greatest populist in US history – William Jennings Bryan. McKinley won 7,112,138 votes and Bryan had 6,510,807.  McKinley beat Bryan again by an even more decisive margin four years later in 1900.

Bryan in 1896, just like Donald Trump today, generated enormous amounts of energy campaigning across the entire American continent on a scale and with an intensity that had never been seen before. More people voted for Bryan than for any other individual in US national history before him. Yet the soothing, easygoing McKinley who hardly ever ventured from his cozy front porch at home during the campaign, beat him legitimately by a margin of almost 5%.

The same pattern held when Bryan ran and lost a third time in 1908 against the literally mountainous (he weighed 330 pounds. or 150 kilograms) William Howard Taft. Yet Taft, who could hardly walk and allegedly got stuck in his own bath in the White House (the story has long been ridiculed but has the ring of truth), won easily too.

Then in 1920, Americans turned their backs on the endless talk, emotional energy and precious few achievements of the high-minded Progressive Era and elected quiet, reassuring conservative Republican Senator Warren Harding of Ohio by record margins. Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt had never enjoyed such a triumph, even though a young Franklin Roosevelt was the vice-presidential candidate on the doomed Democratic ticket.

FDR learned the lesson well himself. In 1932, he smiled a lot and gave vague and contradictory promises about everything to everyone throughout the campaign. So wooly and waffling was Roosevelt that he convinced even such outstanding observers as New York Herald Tribune columnist Walter Lippmann that he was a weak-minded nonentity.

But FDR knew how to smile: Just like Vice President Harris on Tuesday night.

Hapless incumbent President Herbert Hoover added to his woes in 1932 when he allowed his campaign to have as its theme song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” – a heartbreaking tale of woe from the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt ran with “Happy Days Are Here Again.” And he won in a landslide.

In 1980, again in a time of great economic fear and uncertainty across America – though not remotely comparable to the Great Depression, earnest, serious incumbent President Jimmy Carter defended his honorable though inept record and tried to pin Republican candidate Ronald Reagan down on the key issues. However, Reagan – a veteran Hollywood movie star – as much despised by intellectuals then as conservatives sneer at Kamala Harris now – simply knew how to time his reaction lines. “There you go again ” he sighed – America roared with laughter. And that was the end of Carter.

Donald Trump tried to echo the Sainted Reagan on Tuesday night and manfully repeated his “There you go again” line. But he forgot the rest of Reagan’s lessons – and Franklin Roosevelt’s too: to soar above the facts, smile a lot and make people feel good.

So, it was Trump who sounded like Carter in 1980 and Hoover in 1932. And being Trump, he could not help glaring and frowning a lot.

In truth, Trump had a lot to glower and frown about. For the State of the Union after four years of President Joe Biden – the creepy ghostly invisible non-presence still supposedly inhabiting the White House – and the hitherto useless Harris is indeed dour.

However, Americans raised on Disney World and an endless diet of happy, infantile, mindless television sitcoms and psychobabble will always swoon on the empty smile.

Harris thus knew what to do on Tuesday night. And she did it.

There is still time for her to lose this election if major further wars, domestic crises or economic catastrophes erupt during the next two months as well they might.  But on Tuesday night, Harris’s very insecurity and reliance on her imagemakers and handlers served her well.

They brought her the only victory that mattered – influencing the emotional, irrational gut instincts of 20 million or so potential key swing American voters. Trump took the issues and arguments seriously. And that was why he lost.